Valerie McCulley, a resident for the past eight years, said the tiny community some five miles east of Mesquite is virtually overrun with pit bulls that have been attacking, maiming and killing livestock and pets for several weeks.
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| Valerie McCulley points to the spot where she saw a pit bull attacking her milk goat. |
“It’s terrible. I’m seriously thinking of about leaving, moving,” McCulley said.
In mid-August, McCulley said her barking dogs awakened her in the night in response to two large pit bulls that were attacking her goats in the yard outside.
“When I got up I could hear my milk goat screaming,” McCulley said. “It was terrifying. I ran out in the yard and there were two dogs, pit bulls, a brown one and lighter brindle, attacking my goat. One of them had her by the throat.
“I started screaming and screaming myself and it finally let go. It was probably not the smartest thing because where one of the dogs ran off, the other just stopped and stood there looking at me like he was going to attack.”
McCulley said she quickly ran back into the house and called a neighbor who showed up with a pistol moments later.
“The dogs were trapped inside a corner of the fence and Jeff (the neighbor) began shooting at them,” she continued. “The dogs managed to get out of the yard and run off. Jeff believes he hit one of them, but I don’t know, we could find any blood, any sign that they’d been shot.
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| The injuries to Valerie McCulley's milk goat afer being attacked by pit bulls were so severe it had to be put down. |
“I was so mad I could have killed them, but of course they would have killed me,” she said.
Once the dogs were gone, McCulley turned her attention to her two goats.
“They had been ripped apart,” she said. “The udder and lower jaw had just been torn off the milk goat.”McCully said she was devastated. The goats were pets, one she milked every day.
As a result of the attack McCulley said both animals had to be put down.
She is also blaming the dogs for an incident a week earlier in which another goat was badly injured and had to be killed.
McCulley said nearby neighbors have lost chickens, geese and other pets in similar attacks.
“There are pit bulls everywhere,” she said. “People just don’t seem to care. They let them run all over the place. These aren’t wild dogs either. The dogs that attacked my goats didn’t have collars on but they weren’t skinny, somebody was feeding them.”
McCulley said the local deputy from the Mohave County Sheriff’s office examined her yard after being summoned, but without proof of who owns the dogs there’s not much he can do.
“I called the animal control officer in Kingman, but they’re too far away,” she said. “I just don’t know what we can do. The deputy said we could kill those dogs if they’re on our property, but . . . “
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| Valerie McCulley shows a shed where she found one of her goats after a vicious dog attack. |
Trish Carter, public information specialist for the Mohave sheriff’s office, said Scenic’s distance from Kingman is something of a logistics problem for animal control but added officers do not ignore the community.
“We do follow up on these complaints,” Carter said. “We’ll occasionally send an animal control officer up there but basically it just takes a lot of time to find dogs like these and then get them locked up, provided we can even find them.
“We definitely don’t ignore these complaints,” Carter said. “We’re very much animal people here and we know it’s hard for this woman. We understand these were her pets.”
McCulley’s neighbor Jeff combed the community the days after the attack looking for the dogs that might have been responsible but he unable to find them.
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| Jeff displays the bite he received from a pit bull |
“He got bitten really bad by a pit bull that had just had pups, but it wasn’t one of the dogs that were on my place,” McCulley said. “Those dogs took away part of my livelihood. I sold the cheese and soap I made from her milk. I’m thinking of calling somebody, but I don’t know who to call. This really took the wind out of my sails.”
She said the fact that no animal control officer has visited her is discouraging.
“They’ve just left us like we’re not even part of the county,” she said. “What are our tax dollars being used for anyway? We don’t have (paved) roads out here; we should at least have an animal control officer who’ll help. There are pit bulls are all over. Something needs to be done.”
(Desert Valley Times - Sept 3, 2012)
